Blood Feud
Authors: J.D. Nixon
Blood Feud
by JD Nixon
Copyright JD Nixon 2012
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes
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This book is a work of fiction. All characters and locations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or real locations, is purely coincidental. The police force and justice system and their operations and procedures depicted in this book are purely the product of the author’s imagination and are not based on any real jurisdiction.
JD Nixon is an Australian author and Australian English and spelling have been used in this book.
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Heller
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Heller’s Revenge
Heller’s Girlfriend
Heller’s Punishment
Heller’s Decision (due 2013)
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Blood Ties
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Blood Sport
Blood Feud
Blood Tears (due 2013)
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Cuttings from my scrapbook . . .
Wattling Bay Messenger
, Saturday, 30 June 1951
Life in gaol for ‘perverted’ cousins; riot in court
Yesterday in the Wattling Bay Supreme Court, Justice Peter Twomey sentenced two cousins to life imprisonment for the ‘hideous and perverted’ murders of twin sisters in Mount Big Town last Christmas. Donald James Bycraft, 34, and Frank Walter Bycraft, 23, were sentenced amidst great commotion from the public gallery from the families of both the defendants and the victims.
The cousins, residents of Mount Big Town, were found guilty of the murders of Nancy Ann Fuller and Barbara May Fuller, both 19, also of Mount Big Town. The girls’ bodies were found on Christmas Day last year in thick bushland surrounding Lake Big. An extensive search was made for the girls in which every male member of the town participated, including the two accused men.
The sisters were reported missing by their worried parents after failing to return from a Christmas Eve party at a friend’s house. The court heard during the trial that the two men abducted the girls as they walked home from the party. Both girls were strangled after enduring what Justice Twomey expressed as an ‘indescribably perverted and torturous ordeal, beyond the imagining of any decent human being’.
Frank Bycraft showed little emotion as Justice Twomey handed down his sentence. Donald Bycraft laughed and turned to shout to his family that ‘it was all [expletive deleted] worth it’ and then said something obscenely disgusting about the sisters that is unfit for printing in this newspaper. His comments caused a riot in the courtroom that took court officials and police officers fifteen minutes to quell. The sisters’ mother, Mrs Mildred Fuller, fainted during the commotion and was carried from the courtroom by concerned family and court officials.
An angry crowd of citizens from Mount Big Town and Wattling Bay mobbed the prison vehicle as it took the two men away afterwards, threatening to lynch them.
The men will be transported to the city gaol to serve their life sentences, which they are expected to appeal.
Wattling Bay Messenger
, Friday, 6 February 2004
Cousins sentenced for assault
Two cousins, Alan Garry Bycraft, 26, and Karl Brian Bycraft, 25, both unemployed of Mount Big Town, were yesterday found guilty in the Wattling Bay Magistrates Court of assault. The cousins attacked a young woman, 20, as she jogged on Mountain Road early one morning in Mount Big Town in January. Each man was sentenced to two years in jail.
The court heard that the woman did not live in town but was spending the university break with her family when the assault occurred. The two men first tried to run her down in their car as she jogged along the road and attempted to pull her into the vehicle. When she fought them off, they chased her into the surrounding bushland where she was able to fight them off again, before escaping and flagging down a passing motorist.
Sergeant Des Plackert and Constable Ryan Montgomery of the Mount Big Town police told the court they found the two men hiding in the bushland, where they were arrested and taken to the Wattling Bay police station. Both cousins suffered injuries, including knife wounds, during the attack.
Magistrate Jan Ascot commended the young woman for her quick thinking and calm actions in defending herself.
Wattling Bay Messenger
, Wednesday, 20 September 2006
Man jailed after fatal hit and run
Thomas William Bycraft, 19, unemployed of Mount Big Town, was found guilty yesterday in the Wattling Bay Supreme Court of one count of dangerous operation of a vehicle causing death, one count of dangerous operation of a vehicle causing grievous bodily harm and one count of failure to render assistance at the scene of an accident. He was sentenced to fourteen years jail in total. The court heard that Bycraft had been drinking heavily and had also consumed three ecstasy tablets the night before he ran into an elderly woman and her granddaughter as they crossed the Coastal Range Highway in Mount Big Town in April this year.
The woman, Alicia May Fuller, 72, was killed on impact and her granddaughter, 22, was rushed to hospital in Wattling Bay with serious injuries to her leg. Witnesses stated that Bycraft was speeding excessively and made no attempt to brake or swerve as he bore down on the two women. Justice Maria Givenchy told the court that she took this into account when handing down her sentence.
In what may be a related incident, Mrs Fuller’s house in Mount Big Town burnt to the ground during the night. Police believe the circumstances are suspicious and are asking for anyone with information about the fire to contact Crime Stoppers.
Prologue
The terrible events of that day passed in a few blurred minutes, leaving me no time to think or react. But in my dreams, those few moments always replay in slow motion, each detail intensely sharp, every reaction sluggish and exaggerated.
I’m back home on a rare break from the city. Nana Fuller and I cross the highway, planning to enjoy a leisurely coffee and a slice of Fran’s justly famous hummingbird cake at the town’s newly opened cafe/bakery. It’s our time together; something we both treasure. Tiny Nana Fuller trails behind me, still grumbling under her breath about an infestation of mealybugs that’s destroying her lemon tree. She’s a little slower on her feet these days, recovering from a slip in the bath that fractured her ankle. Halfway across the wide road, I stop and wait for her to catch up, checking the traffic again.
And that’s when I spot it.
The car is a behemoth, four times larger than any real vehicle. It accelerates towards us, agile and target-locked, a predatory beast. The car is alive, its grill and headlights forming a face – a grinning, expectant, evil face bearing the same expression as its young driver, Tommy Bycraft. He grips the steering wheel with determined intent.
A fierce defender of decorum in this rude age, Nana Fuller always relentlessly drummed into my head that a lady never raises her voice in public. But I don’t care about good manners now and urgently yell at her to move it. She’s frozen in place, staring helplessly at the predator fast approaching. I grab her frail wrist and yank her with me, sprinting towards the safety of the footpath. Everything seems so languid, yet so clear – the horrified, distant screams of passers-by on the footpath, the roar of the predator, my own panicked shouting, the thumping of my heart.
I’m not fast enough. The predator is swift and unstoppably ruthless. It hunts us down. The sickening sound of engine-powered metal impacting on delicate human flesh and bones thuds through the air. I lose my grip on Nana Fuller, knocked flying to the ground, pain tearing down my leg from my hip. I can’t move and can only watch as Nana Fuller is thrown upwards over the bonnet in a series of acrobatic tumbles. She lands hard on the road, the predator speeding off, obscured by exhaust smoke.
Her body is shattered, her bones jutting out at impossible angles. Such fragile flesh, I think to myself, stunned senseless. Blood trickles from her mouth, her nose, her ears, her eyes. One of her shoes has landed in the gutter and her dress is ruched up around her thighs, exposing her lacy petticoat. She’ll be embarrassed by that, I stupidly think to myself.
She blinks her eyes, the blood in them mingling with the white, leaving her with a pink-hued gaze. With great effort she lifts her head and turns it my way.
“
Tessie,” she reproaches thickly through her broken neck. “Why didn’t you save me? Why?” And she sounds so sad and disappointed in me that tears instantly flood my eyes. “Why?”
She turns her head away as if she can’t stand to look at me anymore. I have let her down.
I have let her die.
Chapter 1
In the early dawn I jolted awake without calling out, a few tears dripping onto my pillow, my breath ragged. Once more I mourned my immense loss, though it was six years since Nana Fuller had died. But how could I ever forget that awful day? I berated myself yet again.
Why didn’t I save her?
Everyone told me it wasn’t my fault, but in my vulnerable deepest sleep, my psyche regularly asserted its steadfast conviction that it was. I’d failed to protect my much-adored grandmother from the Bycrafts and my guilt was a weighty burden to carry for the rest of my life.
Troubled by my dream and knowing that sleep would now prove elusive, I padded over to my dresser and took an envelope out of my top drawer. I’d read the enclosed letter a hundred times since it arrived a week ago, but I slipped it out and read it again. Badly scrawled and poorly spelt, it showed the consequences of years of playing hooky from school.
Tessy